


Keeping the Monsters Away

by kishiriaz



Category: Horus Heresy - Various Authors, Warhammer 40k (Novels) - Various Authors
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Past Abuse, Platonic Cuddling, healing from childhood trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-19
Updated: 2014-07-19
Packaged: 2018-02-09 11:42:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1981692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kishiriaz/pseuds/kishiriaz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Emperor retires, and asks Angron and Lorgar to guard his children.  Angron finds that the Imperial children are not the only ones needing protecting.  Part 1 of the Retirement AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Keeping the Monsters Away

When the Emperor asked Angron to guard His children, Angron agreed without hesitation. Angron liked children. They were something very worth protecting. He knew that here on Imperia, the retirement world to which the Imperial Family had retreated, that there would be few threats from the planet itself. From the outside, possibly.

“You’ll be working with Lorgar,” the Emperor told him.

“Hngh. As long as the priest keeps his pious words to himself,” Angron responded. 

Angron only had a single, Astartes-sized duffle bag of belongings. He left his armour in storage, but would not bend on putting his two axes into an arms room. Gorefather and Gorechild were clean and ready to hang in his sleeping chamber.

His room—his cell, almost—consisted of a large wardrobe and chest of drawers, a single bed, desk and chair, and a sink. It was sufficient. He hung up his axes on the wall beside the bed, opened his duffle, dumped the clothes on the floor, and he was moved in.

The Imperial children had a schedule. Angron and Lorgar adhered to it. At five, the children ate at the large table in their dining room. After that, they picked up their toys, put them away, and got ready for baths. The older ones took showers and the younger got their baths with oversight from their half-brothers. Then, they sat in their pajamas in the playroom and waited for a story.

“Do you have stories, Uncle Angron?” one of the older boys asked.

Angron considered. “There was a time when my daughter Ankeara and I were holed up in a cave in a cliff. 

“Was there a dragon?”

“No…but there was a High-Rider hovercraft outside. I was sick, I had an infection from an abdominal wound, and it was draining—“

“Yes!” Lorgar interjected. “It was a terrible dragon! It was—green! With teeth like table knives. And it roared at Ankeara and Angron. Angron, make the roar for them.”

Angron thought, then let out the howl that had terrorized his enemies for decades. The kids shrieked in delight.

“All right…it’ll take them forever to get to sleep tonight,” muttered Lorgar. “So Ankeara and Angron knew they were in terrible danger, especially since Angron was sick from eating too many mushrooms.”

Angron glowered, Lorgar ignored him.

“So Ankeara thought, if the mushrooms could make Angron sick, they might make the dragon sick, too. So she gathered up all the mushrooms in the cave and wrapped them in a white bedsheet. Then she whirled it around her head, threw it out of the cave, and you know? The dragon thought it was a marshmallow. So he snapped it in his mouth,” Lorgar snapped his teeth together for emphasis, “and found out it was mushrooms. That was fine, though, because while dragons like to eat small children and Primarchs best, their next favourite thing is mushrooms. And he swallowed them all down.”

“And he got sick!” one of the boys exclaimed.

“Did he throw up?” asked another.

“He did. Then he fainted. When he woke up, Angron and Ankeara were gone, and he never tried to eat another Primarch again. The end.”

The Emperor and Arlette had slipped into the room as Lorgar told the story. Angron had seen them enter. The children and their parents applauded, then came together for goodnight hugs and kisses. The Imperial couple tucked their offspring in, turned off lights, then came out to thank the two Primarchs for an excellent first day on the job.

That night, Angron realized that the children were not all he would need to protect. 

Angron was the lightest sleeper of the Primarchs, both because of the constant pain in his skull and the hypervigilance he’d cultivated out of pure necessity. Lorgar’s wail was not terribly loud, but it was the fear and despair in it that caused Angron to leap from his bed, seizing his axes in his hands. He crashed from his room, across the hall, and kicked open Lorgar’s door. 

The priest’s room was identical to Angron’s own, except for the piles of books everywhere. Angron stomped over them, swiveling his head this way and that, the Nails singing in his mind, urging him to kill. He still registered Lorgar whimpering, but it took him a few long moments to realize there was no enemy, and that Lorgar was still in distress.

He lowered the axes. “Brother. “

“Angron.” Lorgar was cowering on his bed, where it fitted into the corner. His gold-tattooed scalp glistened with perspiration and his grey hooded robe was tangled about his legs. He emitted a groan of terror and raised his hands over his eyes, babbling in Colchisian.

Angron lay his axes carefully at the foot of the bed. “What has troubled you?”

Lorgar wouldn’t lower his hands. “Don’t touch me. Cover yourself.”

Angron looked around, found a discarded towel, and wrapped it around his waist. Only then did Lorgar lower his hands, and start staring at Angron. “You’re naked.” He emitted a little scoff. “Do you always attack in the nude?”

Angron looked down at himself. “It shocks my opponent and puts them off balance. I know that my naked form is terrifying.”

It was. Angron was covered in scars, including a long one of many cuts, wrapped around his torso, going from just above his pubic hairline, to over his shoulders. That, and his member was enormous and erect. It was softening and lowering under the folds of the towel, but the effect was only slightly minimized.

“I…have nightmares sometimes,” Lorgar confessed.

Angron poured a glass of water for Lorgar and handed it to him. As Lorgar drank, Angron tried to breathe deeply, to calm the Nails. He might end up having to run into the woods, to find an animal and tear it apart with his hands. 

Lorgar handed the glass back and tucked himself into bed again. “Thank you. I will be all right now. As long as I don’t have nightmares about THAT.” He pointed to the towel around Angron’s waist. 

“Heh. Many have dreamed of it,” Angron said. “I will leave you to more pleasant dreams.”

He returned to his room. Angron did not like having to sleep in clothing, but it seemed like it would be necessary. He returned his axes to the wall, then dug into the pile of clothes on the floor. He retrieved a World Eaters duty robe and slid it on over his body. It was sleeveless, came to his knees, and left most of his chest bare. He turned off the light and lay down.

The next day proceeded exactly as the first one had, then the next. Angron’s pile of clothes became two; one clean and one dirty. He adhered to Arlette’s direction that he bathe at least once every 24 hours, but this fastidiousness did not apply to his own quarters.

On the third night, he awakened to Lorgar’s cries again. This time, Angron left the axes behind, walked into the room calmly, and wore his robe. Lorgar was weeping, but allowed Angron to sit beside him. He made no attempt to hold Angron, which Angron thought was unusual. Ankeara would always cling to him like a barnacle when she awakened from a nightmare. 

“What causes you to cry out in the night, brother?” Angron asked. “You can tell me.”

Lorgar shook his head. “Do not trouble yourself. “

“You have already pulled me from my bed. I’m troubled already.”

“You’ll think I’m weak. You’ve endured such greater horrors than I.”

“One does not measure one’s own pain against other’s.”

Lorgar took a deep breath. “My childhood was not always...pleasant. My adopted father worshiped the Chaos gods, remember. There were actions that pleased them. I often have dreams in which I remember that which I keep out of my waking mind.”

“He hurt you?”

“I was very young and small when I received my first tattoos. On my back, where they are least painful, but still. I was young and small.”

“Hngh. What else?”

“He rarely spoke kindly to me. He and Erebus would behave as if I were not in the room. They took my power for themselves, and I didn’t know how to regain it.”

“I have also experienced these things. I was a gladiator slave, Lorgar. I had no say over what was done to me.”

Lorgar looked up at him. “I’m the second smallest of the Primarchs. You’re so big and strong.”

“You are only slightly smaller than Sanguinius, and you would think of him as weak?”

“No. Of course not.”

“Then do not judge yourself so. Besides, as large as I am, there were always things the High-Riders could do to force me to do what they wanted. Drugs, usually, or threats against my child, or my sisters and brothers. But drugs made me the most pliant, and the safest. “ He ground his metal teeth together. “My oppressors would rent me out to others. Often it was to train other gladiators, which I did not mind at all. If I trained them, I knew they would be able to fight at my side when the time came. Other times, they had different plans for my flesh.”

“They whored you out?” Lorgar’s eyes were enormous.

Angron nodded. “Many of the High-Riders wanted to experience my body for themselves. For that I would be sedated, but not so much that I couldn’t hear and obey. Usually I would not remember the encounter, but I knew what had happened when I awakened in a strange, silken bed.”

Lorgar reached out tentatively and took Angron’s big, scarred hand in his smaller, softer one. “I was never sedated,” he said.

Angron paused, the only sound being his harsh breathing. Then he roared and put his fist through a wall. “Damn them!” 

Lorgar cringed, and Angron realized what he’d done. He grabbed Lorgar’s shoulders and pulled the smaller man into his embrace. “They will never hurt you again. Ever. I will protect you as I protect these children of our father. Come.”

He led Lorgar into the big parlour that was in front of the nursery rooms. He unfolded the sofa-bed, then lay down, wrapping his arms around his priest brother.

“I will protect you,” he said again. “You will be safe with me. Sleep now.”

Lorgar started weeping. Angron ran his hand over his tattooed scalp, then hummed tunelessly to him. As Lorgar began to calm down, Angron said, “You may feel me having an erection during the night. Do not worry. I have been ruined for sex, and do not desire it. It’s just the Nails having an effect.”

Lorgar nodded and lay his arm along Angron’s. The embrace was far more comfortable than he would have thought. They never felt the need to use their rooms again.


End file.
